Music theory is the study of the elements of music including rhythm, harmony, melody, structure and texture and students learn how to read, write and analyse music and all its components. For centuries, the process of teaching and learning music theory and the process of examining students and their level of proficiency has remained unchanged. Even today, conventional books are still used to teach students how to read, write and analyse music and examinations in music theory are still undertaken and marked manually. Disadvantages associated with such a process include the time and cost in printing the books and marking the examination papers, the minimal feedback that is provided to students in relation to their examinations and the delay in providing the results of the examinations and feedback to the students.
Modern technology has provided some advancement in the field of writing, teaching, printing and publishing music. For example, numerous software packages are available that enable composers to electronically write music via a computer. One example of such software is Sibelius 4 available from Sibelius Software, which comprises a plurality of toolbars and menus from which a composer can select the desired notes and other musical notation to compose a score. The software can automatically update instrumental parts when the full score is updated and the software also plays the composed score allowing composers to listen to their composition. A further enhancement includes video for which music can be written via the software. Teaching aspects of the software include lesson plans and explanations of musical concepts.
However, such software applications do not educate students how to correctly form the notes and other musical notation, how to correctly position them or other aspects of writing music. Such software applications also fail to address the aforementioned drawbacks associated with examining students and marking students' examination papers.
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